Reshma Shivdekar
The educational website ‘Shodhganga’ will be featuring more than 5 lakh academic works from MPhil and PhD researchers from the country. These academic works, which often get lost into oblivion in the shelves of universities and institutes, can now be accessed by researchers all around the world.
Pune University from Maharashtra has provided around 12,404 theses—the largest number in the country. Kolhapur University is also among the top 10 universities providing their research works. Mumbai University has made available around 7,000 theses dating back from 1930. The project ‘ShodhGanga’ has been launched by the Union Government’s Ministry of Education with the collaboration of around 750 universities.
Despite directives from the University Grants Commission (UGC), universities had shown little interest in providing theses. Mumbai University, one of the three oldest universities, had made around 500 theses available online, which was two years ago. However, the work is picking up pace at the moment, and around 7 thousand research works are already up on the website, as stated to Lokmat by Dr Nandkishore Motewar, director of the Knowledge Resource Centre of the University. He also clarified that more theses will be uploaded by February.
About Shodhganga
- PhD theses are the result of thorough and immersive research on a specific subject, and oftentimes, post completion these works are lost in the archives of the university and institutes
- Shodhganga was created to make such valuable knowledge available globally
- UGC has made it mandatory for all universities to create electronic copies of their theses on Shodhganga
Grinding Work
- Firstly, every single page of the thesis is scanned
- To make the digital copy readable and accessible, it has to be then converted into an OCR (Optical Character Reader). It is then uploaded on the website.
- Converting older theses is proving especially difficult, but the task is underway
Leading 10 Universities
Anna, Chennai- 15, 466
Madras- 14,668
Kolkata- 14,098
Savitribai Phule, Pune- 12, 404
Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj- 10,152
Aligardh Muslim- 9,881
Babasaheb Ambedkar Bihar- 9, 675
Andhra- 9,559
Punjab- 8,911
Purvanchal- 8,903